In Pursuit of Butterflies

by Matthew Oates

  In Cirencester Park Woods the Pearl-bordered Fritillary abounded from April 20th into mid-May, establishing over thirty colonies and wandering almost everywhere. Some of the colonies were genuinely large, where over a hundred individuals could be counted fluttering low over the clearings and young plantations, visiting Bugle and Bluebell flowers. Somehow, they out-performed the Strawberry Banks Marsh Fritillaries, who flattered to deceive. Much to my surprise, Marsh Fritillary numbers there were almost identical to those of 2010, raising the question of what happened to all those caterpillars. To recap, there were some 5000 larvae in 2010 and 25,000 in 2011, only for both years to produce peak adult counts of around 550. Perhaps a large number of 2011's larvae starved, or were trodden on, predated or parasitised? The latter seems least likely – unless my careful and assiduous monitoring of the parasite load has been grossly inaccurate.

  Then along came June. The diary summarises it thus:

  June 2011 was despicable, though we were due a poor one. It produced a good spell from the 2nd to the 4th, a reasonable day on the 6th, a lovely day on the 14th and short bursts of hot sun on the 26th and 27th. That apart it was Vile, with much heavy rain (especially during the second half), many clear cold nights, and many cloudy days. And it was even worse in northern Britain.

  The latter remark is borne out by a weather-spoilt trip to the North York Moors and the Durham coast cliffs. Between squalls I managed to see the first Large Heaths of the year at Fen Bog, near lonely Goathland on the Moors, and visited the coastal cliffs at Easington, which are some of the loveliest, flower-rich cliffs I have seen. There, the Northern Brown Argus was just starting to emerge on cliff slopes jewelled with the flowers of Bird's-foot Trefoil, Bloody Crane's-bill, Common Rock-rose, Kidney Vetch, Northern Marsh-orchid, Common Spotted-orchid and, the best of the bunch, Burnet Rose. The adjoining beach had been used for dumping coal spoil, only for the light to be seen, the mess removed and the sea allowed to cleanse the beach. A visit there does much good to one's faith in our sensitivity to Nature, and in Nature's self-restorative powers.

  The race was on for the earliest ever Purple Emperor. The records are vague, though, and emanate from the remarkable spring and summer of 1893, when March and April behaved as they did in 2011, but then led into the most glorious, if drought-struck, of summers. Certainly, iris was out in the New Forest ‘by early June’ that year and the boys of Marlborough College took a specimen in West Woods on June 10th. It is probable that the butterfly actually appeared in May that year. In 2013, after a lot of kerfuffle, the first was seen on June 13th, at Bookham Common, Surrey. It must be recorded, somewhat diplomatically, that Bookham's Emperor Watcher-in-Residence Ken Willmott was abroad at the time, and that this remarkable record was achieved by Rob Hill, his deputy. I was in Alice Holt that day, where iris was not out but White Admiral and Silver-washed Fritillary were starting. Then the weather worsened, and the emergence was held back. Purple Emperor probably started in Alice Holt Forest on the 21st, only I was in Heddon valley on the Exmoor coast that day, where High Brown Fritillary was emerging strongly (having initially appeared there as early as May 19th). The High Brown Fritillary was calling me back out on to active service, perhaps rightly so, as it is our most rapidly declining butterfly; also, I seem to have the knack of being able to separate it in flight from the highly similar Dark Green Fritillary.

  Oates's grand entrance to Fermyn Woods took place on July 1st, at the start of a short spell of fine weather. I drove past, and disturbed, 21 butterfly photographers en route to the cottage I was staying in on the edge of the wood. Unfortunately there is no other way to the cottage, and at that time of year the rides are almost infested with butterfly photographers, after Emperors. I estimated that some 2000 butterfly photographers visited Fermyn Woods that season. That figure was included in a proof of evidence laid before a public inquiry that autumn into proposals for a wind farm on the edge of the wood. My argument was quite simple: this is the Emperor's heartland, this is BB's heartland, and four 125-metre giant wind turbines on the hill top would destroy the immense sense of spirit of place that exists there. Eventually common sense prevailed.

  The first Emperor I saw in the woods that morning was an extreme aberration. It was a male, later identified as ab. afflicta. He possessed more white spots than ab. lugenda, having three large white spots and half a dozen small and indistinct white speckles on the forewings, though lacking the normal white bands. He had been seen, and photographed, down on the ride two days previously by Neil Hulme and others, and here he was, basking in dappled shade in front of me, slightly less than pristine but still beautiful beyond words. Three years on the trot I had seen and photographed acute aberrations of the Purple Emperor. Either my luck was ridiculously in or some god was smiling down on me. I was the last person ever to see this specimen, for despite constant vigilance from many of the visiting photographers he did not reappear. He had moved into a different phase of life and had stopped visiting the ride surfaces for sustenance. That same day I saw and photographed a superb Comma aberration, a freshly emerged ab. suffusa male, whose wings were extensively suffused with dark markings. He too was not seen again, but that mattered little: my goal was a full iole iris, without a vestige of any white markings – that and only that.

  It mattered not that the rest of July was poor, that August became cool, cloudy and often wet and windy, or that to add insult to an injured summer, the hottest weather of the year occurred at the end of September and the start of October, when the temperature almost reached 30 degrees. Only the pursuit of iole mattered, and that would have to wait for another year.

  That early July night I wandered the woods, to celebrate, and also to give thanks. There was no moon, but a pall of cloud overhead, and the sky was immensely dark, but I took no torch, for that would have been a gross intrusion. The air was heavy, with a warm stillness. Wisps of wood smoke hung about in a wooded hollow, yet there was no obvious sign of fire, for no woodmen had been working there. Shapes of trees could just be made out, within a deepening shadow land where dark greeted darkness, but at best they flickered in and out of focus and were merely benign. In places glow worms wanly lit the way along the vagueness that was the edge of the riding, Grasshopper Warblers reeled away in a clearing amongst Wood Small-reed tussocks, and ghosting moths flew around haphazardly in a lightless world. I was in the Emperor's kingdom, within BB's heartland, and no harm could possibly come my way. It mattered not that I was walking blind. The forest had closed around me.

  Green Man

  If I could but more than sense you

  sudden in a wisp of smoke-wood

  rising from within a hidden glade

  the invisible face of the greenwood

  flitting between mind and focus

  betwixt countless dancing leaves

  foxglove bells or sweetbriar scent

  carried on the vibrant hum of insects

  hoverflies through evening sunlight

  midges dancing joyously to death

  In every one of these you might yet be

  but only in the half-seen moment

  when the last swallow passes high

  or the first bat flickers stilling air

  as a spark explodes in vibrant flame

  your spirit so rampantly appears

  then disappears outside wooded time

  in and out of mind and leaf and fire

  there and not there yet within us

  leaping the dimensions of inner life

  (Fermyn Woods, Northamptonshire, July 3rd 2011)

  Savernake Forest

  Only a forest could carry the name Savernake – or perhaps a venerable public school, or possibly a cathedral named after a canonised Anglo-Saxon bishop. The very word reeks of History, and also suggests somewhere deep, mysterious and utterly unique – which Savernake Forest certainly is. It is derived from a Saxon place name, Safernoc, for a forest of that title was known to exist around AD 934, in the far-off days of King Athelstan of Wessex. T
he fact that the forest's name has transmogrified only slightly over a millennium – from Safernoc to Savernake – is perhaps indicative of how strongly it relishes its sense of time, place and identity. There is over a thousand years of documented history here. Moreover, since William the Conqueror gave it to one of his knights as a hunting forest, Savernake has never been bought or sold, but has remained for 31 generations within the same family (including some female successions), though it has shrunk considerably in size and has effectively retreated to its core. Each generation of the family appoints a Warden of Savernake, who is charged with the stewardship of the forest's immense sense of place, its depth.

  Essentially, Savernake Forest, which lies to the immediate east of the old borough town of Marlborough in Wiltshire, is a place apart. It is not of this age, but of Age itself, with numerous layers of history and much intrinsic mystery. It is pitted with archaeological features – old saw pits, and the like. Henry VIII wooed Jane Seymour here, and enjoyed hunting within the forest's boundless acres. Jane, of course, was neither divorced nor beheaded, but died in childbirth. Later, towards the end of the eighteenth century, a 27-metre (90-foot) stone column was erected – a sycophantic excrescence – celebrating the return to health of ‘mad’ King George III. Then, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown imposed one of his designed landscapes on the forest, including the longest avenue in the UK – Grand Avenue, which is over 6 kilometres long and is fringed by Beech trees. During the Second World War the forest hosted a massive ammunition depot and a large number of Americans, who left behind much of the graffiti on the ancient Beech trunks. There are some seriously dark moments within Savernake's history, notably several murders, including the start of the horrific Hungerford massacre of August 1987. Either there is a dark side to this forest, or to some of the people attracted to it, or both. Humanity has certainly tainted its history. Or perhaps, as veteran tree expert Ted Green argues, forests are run by fungi, which are oblivious to humanity.

  Edward Thomas picked up on this feel in his biography of his mentor, the great Victorian nature writer Richard Jefferies, whose heartland lies to the immediate north. Thomas visited Savernake with his wife Helen in August 1907. He writes that Jefferies was attracted to Savernake, ‘liking the place for its beauty, its solitude, and its many uncertain memories.’ Later he comments on ‘the great depths below the forest roof that seem to be submerged in time.’ Jefferies himself ventures deeper: in an essay entitled ‘A Day in Savernake Forest’, he states first that the forest ‘beguiles us from the region of fact to the realms of fiction, and brings us face to face with Nature in some of her more witching aspects.’ He then becomes even more profound:

  The silvery trunks and arching boughs more than realise all that poets and romance writers have ever said or sung of woodland naves and forest aisles, of which the noblest cathedrals offer so poor a copy.

  Jefferies concludes by calling Savernake the ‘loveliest forest in Britain’, though to Jefferies ‘loveliness’ engenders love, and is way beyond mere visual beauty.

  Savernake Forest lies on gently undulating plateau land, on Upper Chalk which is often covered with Clay-with-Flint deposits. Today, the main block of the forest totals about 1000 hectares, 904 of which are designated as SSSI. The SSSI was originally designated on account of the rich lichen flora of the forest's ancient oaks, but more recent surveys have found the fungi and saproxylic interest (‘dead wood invertebrates’) to be every bit as important, if not more so. Seemingly, this forest reveals its secrets only slowly, and is a place of ongoing discovery. It has many unique features; for example, other forests specialise in brambles and blackberries, but here the bramble cover has been inhibited by centuries of deer browsing, and instead Savernake specialises in luxurious Wild Raspberries.

  Ted Green believes that Savernake Forest holds the largest number of ancient large-girth Pedunculate Oak and Beech trees anywhere in Europe, and perhaps also of Sweet Chestnut, and quite possibly sallows. Many of these ancient sentinels have names, like the Amity Oak, Duke's Vaunt Oak, King of Limbs and Saddle Oak. The best known is the Big Belly Oak, which is sited on the A346 which skirts Savernake's western flank. Other veterans stand close to the A4, an old coaching road that runs noisily through the forest's northern fringe.

  For centuries, Savernake was pasture-woodland and/or a hunting forest – at one point with a deer fence (park pale) some 25 kilometres long. But silviculture gradually inveigled its way into the forest, initially through the activities of the 5th Marquess of Ailesbury during the nineteenth century. Then, in 1939, the Forestry Commission took on a 999-year lease from Savernake Estate for the timber rights. Rather predictably, large areas of Beech plantation were established, and the south-east sector of the forest was painfully coniferised, along with many of the outlying woods which were formerly part of the hunting forest. The long-term plan now, of course, is to restore native broad-leaved woodland, even pasture-woodland.

  Butterfly-wise, Savernake supports a rather limited fauna (the moth fauna is far more impressive). Several of the more precious butterfly species have been lost from the forest in recent decades; as examples, the Pearl and Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries both died out in the mid-1980s, the High Brown Fritillary a couple of decades earlier. The Brown Hairstreak was last recorded in 1982, just before the extensive stands of Blackthorn it frequented were cleared away. The White Admiral, so ubiquitous in many southern woods today, is decidedly scarce in Savernake, as Honeysuckle has been heavily browsed by a rampant Fallow Deer population, though it is stronger in some of the outlying woods that were formerly part of the forest. Even the Silver-washed Fritillary is distinctly localised, occurring around the main blocks of oak woodland. A scatter of surprisingly tall and healthy Wych Elms supports colonies of the White-letter Hairstreak.

  Savernake Forest essentially specialises in one butterfly species, and one only – the Purple Emperor. Indeed, the Emperor is named in the SSSI citation. Strangely, and despite the long history of butterfly collecting in the Marlborough area, led by boys from Marlborough College, the Purple Emperor was not recorded in Savernake until 1947, and then not again until 1977. I R P Heslop considered the forest unsuitable – too open – in his 1964 book Notes & Views of the Purple Emperor. Since 1977, the butterfly has been seen annually in Savernake, mainly in the southern parts, around the Column. In some years the population seems quite reasonable, in others the butterfly is scarcely seen – but that's the Emperor all over. This is not the easiest or most sensible place in the country to see Purple Emperors, for here the males fly around unusually tall Beech trees and often appear as mere specks, which is misleading, as the Savernake race of Apatura iris is unusually large. There are nine male territories in regular, though not necessarily annual, use along Three Oak Hill Drive, the straight Brownian ride that leads off from Grand Avenue to the Column. Butterfly enthusiasts, though, ignore these territories and gather only around the Column, simply because the butterfly regularly settles on this eighteenth-century folly, and can be photographed there, albeit through telephoto lenses. In 2013 one male was photographed perched on the part of the Column's inscription that reads ‘their excellent and beloved Sovereign’. The butterfly may have a rosy future in Savernake, for in the early 2000s the Forestry Commission carried out extensive thinning and clearance works along Three Oak Hill Drive and the southern end of Grand Avenue, stimulating a considerable amount of sallow regeneration in the process. The butterfly started to breed in these sallows in 2013. Prior to then it was restricted to breeding on tall and often veteran sallows that occur locally in the forest, many of which are unusually large and are nearing the end of their natural lives. Clearly, Savernake Forest treasures its Purple Emperors.

  Its next-best species are, curiously, the Green-veined White and Orange-tip. These are often profuse, as one of their main foodplants, Garlic Mustard, abounds in scrapings dumped along the edges of Grand Avenue and Three Oak Hill Drive when the avenues are resurfaced, as happens regularly, given thei
r capacity to generate potholes.

  Increasingly, Savernake is being invaded by the motor car. Traffic roars along its northern and western fringes, though the sound is muffled in summer by leaves. Under the open-access agreement established between the Forestry Commission and Savernake Estate back in 1939, people have the right to drive along Grand Avenue and Three Oak Hill Drive as far as the Column. Traffic seems to have driven away the Headless Horseman ghost that reputedly haunts Grand Avenue. The forest is becoming increasingly busy, subjected to modern-day recreation. Of course, when it is full of people it simply closes itself down. But in the gloaming, especially on still deep-winter days when the air is chill and the dog walkers have all but departed, the forest wakes, to play tricks of light on its few remaining visitors. A spectral white stag is reputed to appear occasionally at dusk, along with shadowy animated figures, some vaguely human, some distinctly animal, all primeval. And in a gale, it is its wildest self: an orderless elemental place, where wildness and meekness, dark and light, peace and anger are all one. Be careful, this place speaks in tongues.

  Best of all, beneath aloof Beech trees off Three Oak Hill Drive lie a series of depressions, old clay workings, which fill up darkly with water and spent leaves in autumn. These have the feel of the pools described in C S Lewis's The Magician's Nephew – the pools that lead into other worlds, in a chapter entitled ‘The Wood between the Worlds’. Savernake wishes to be that sort of forest. Jefferies was right: it is a cathedral, one of Nature's finest.